Thursday, August 03, 2006

Can we talk?

BRUSSELS - When the bodies of Stacy Lemmens, aged 7, and Nathalie Mahy, 10, were found by a railway line in Liège on 28 June, after the pair had gone missing during a street festival earlier in the month, the spectre of convicted paedophile killer Marc Dutroux was raised once again in the Belgian public consciousness. ....But observers believe that the reaction to the murders of Stacy and Nathalie also show that Belgium has changed the way it deals with crimes against children."We have made an improvement in getting rid of the taboo of talking about violence against children," Children Rights' Commissioner Ankie Vanderkerckhove told Reuters.